Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a stereoscopic image display device, and more particularly, to a stereoscopic image display device, which acquires design parameters based on the same aperture ratio and the same back distance with respect to a single barrier cell when displaying different numbers of views using the barrier cell.
Discussion of the Related Art
At present, services for rapid dissemination of information, to be constructed based on high-speed information communication networks, have developed from a simple “listening and speaking” service, such as current telephones, to a “watching and listening” multimedia type service based on digital terminals used for high-speed processing of characters, voices and images, and are expected to be ultimately developed into hyperspace 3-Dimensional (3D) stereoscopic information communication services enabling virtual reality and stereoscopic viewing free from the restrains of time and space.
In general, stereoscopic images representing a 3-Dimension (3D) are realized based on the principle of stereo-vision via the viewer's eyes. However, since the viewer's eyes are spaced apart from each other by about 65 mm, i.e. have a binocular parallax, the left and right eyes perceive slightly different images due to a positional difference between the two eyes. Such an image difference due to the positional difference between the two eyes is called binocular disparity. Also, a 3D stereoscopic image display device is designed based on binocular disparity to allow the left eye to view only an image for the left eye and the right eye to view only an image for the right eye.
More specifically, when the left and right eyes view different 2D images, respectively, and the two different images are transmitted to the brain through the retina, the brain accurately combines the images, reproducing depth perception and realism of an original 3D image. This ability is conventionally referred to as stereography (stereoscopy), and a display device to which stereoscopy is applied is referred to as a stereoscopic display device.
Stereoscopic display devices may be classified into glasses-type stereoscopic display devices and non-glasses type stereoscopic display devices. Representative examples of non-glasses type stereoscopic display devices include a parallax barrier type device and a liquid-crystal electric-field lens type device based on a method of realizing a 3D image.
However, conventional stereoscopic image display devices as described above have problems as follows.
In the conventional stereoscopic image display devices, image data, driving pixels of an image panel, and views of a switching cell (e.g., a barrier cell) should correspond to one another on a one to one ratio. Thus, it is difficult to deal with any change in image content or in the number of views of the image panel, and there is a need for a switching cell having different barriers depending on different numbers of views. Moreover, whenever the switching cell is changed, the aperture ratio of the barrier and the back distance are also changed, which causes a structural limit to allow a single stereoscopic image display device to have different numbers of views.
That is, difficulty in displaying different numbers of views using a single stereoscopic image display device results in a limit in representation of various content.